﻿AND PRACRIT LANGUAGES. 209 



Or from nouns. The rules concerning different 

 voices follow: they are succeeded by precepts re- 

 garding the use of the tenses; and the work con- 

 cludes w ith the etymology of verbal nouns, gerunds, 

 supines, and participles. A supplement to it con- 

 tains the anomalies of the dialect, in which the Feda 

 is composed. 



The outline of Pan'ini's arrangement is simple; 

 but numerous exceptions and frequent digressions 

 have involved it in much seeming confusion. The 

 two first lectures (the first section especially, which 

 is in a manner the key of the whole grammar) con-, 

 tain definitions ; in the three next are collected the 

 affixes, by which verbs and nouns are inflected. 

 Those which appertain to verbs, occupy the third 

 lecture : the fourth and fifth contain such as are 

 affixed to nouns. The remaining three lectures treat 

 of the changes which roots and affixes undergo in 

 special cases, or by general rules of orthography, 

 and which are all effected by the addition or by the 

 substitution of one or more elements *. The apparent 

 simplicity of the design vanishes in the perplexity of 

 the structure. The endless pursuit of exceptions and 

 of limitations so disjoins the general precepts, that the 

 reader cannot keep in view their intended connexion 

 and mutual relation. He wanders in an intricate 

 maze ; and the clew of the labyrinth is continually 

 slipping from his hands. 



The order in which Ramachandra has delivered 

 the rules ot" grammar is certainly preferable; but the 

 sutras of Pan'ini thus detached from their context 

 are wholly unintelligible. Without the comimenta- 

 tor's exposition, they are indeed what Sir William 

 Jones has somewhere termed them, dark as the 

 darkest oracle. Even with the aid of a comment, 

 they cannot be fully understood until they are per- 

 used M'ith the proper <rontext. Notwithstanding 



P this 



• Even the expunging of a letter is considered as the substitution 

 of a blank. 



